Ants Attack Elderly Man in Hospital ICU

Oct. 29, 2010— -- As Cornelius Lewis lay in an intensive care unit at Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers, Fla., while recovering from pacemaker surgery, he was attacked by tiny invaders but not the bacterial or viral kind. Instead, his attackers were tiny ants.

"The day he came out of surgery, he looked great and the next morning, my dad said they moved his ICU room and didn't say why," said Lewis' daughter Maureen.

She said her father had hundreds of bites all over his body. He was very itchy and had a feeling something was wrong but couldn't do much to help himself.

"After his surgery, one of his arms was tied to his chest so he wouldn't move it and the other one he has rotator cuff issues with, but he felt something burning in his groin," said Maureen. She also said Lewis couldn't see the ants because he had multiple blankets on.

Karen Krieger, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, confirmed last Monday's incident and said pavement ants were what attacked Lewis.

"That was confirmed by our professional service," she said.

But Lewis' daughter doesn't believe pavement ants were the culprits, since pavement ants do not bite or sting.

Jim Fredericks, director of technical services at the National Pest Management Association in Fairfax, Va. said while pavement ants are often found indoors, they are harmless pests.

"Pavement ants don't bite, but they do have a stinger, but they rarely sting," said Jim Fredericks, director of technical services at the National Pest Management Association in Fairfax, Va.

Lewis said the marks on her father definitely looked like fire ant stings. "They were fire ants," she said. "[The bites] were red, and they had pustules."

Entomologists also suspect the same. If so, the fact that they attacked a man indoors was a freak occurrence that will likely not have any serious health consequences, according to entomologists, who say there are usually no long-term health effects from fire ant stings. But people who are severely allergic to the venom could go into anaphylactic shock.

Fire Ants a Common Outdoor Pest

If fire ants did attack Lewis, experts say it's very unusual for them to be indoors.

"They will be inside if they've detected some food and are foraging for food," said Robert Plowes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fire ants will attack humans if they feel threatened.

"They respond to the smell of humans and the smell of breath," said Plowes. "If somebody blows on them, they get alarmed, and if they happen to be disturbned by movement or by vibration, they immediately react by generating an alarm pheromone."